


as an arrow endures the bow

by Lvslie



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - 19th Century, Getting Together, Hand kissing and loosened cravats, Happy Ending, M/M, Mutual Pining, References to Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Tread softly, catholic guilt babey........, it's about the repression........ the yearning, this is just 17k words of pining in italy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2020-01-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:08:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22203088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lvslie/pseuds/Lvslie
Summary: “You are—free,” he continues, haltingly. His narrow chest is heaving. “Are you happy?”“No. No, I am not.”[Or; a late 19th century AU inspired byMauriceandAge of Innocence]
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Patricia Blum Uris/Stanley Uris
Comments: 40
Kudos: 390





	as an arrow endures the bow

**Author's Note:**

> i've spent the past two weeks in a haze of researching the nooks and crannies of 19th century venice, rereading forster and constructing Intricate Rituals. 
> 
> at this point, i'm not sure if this whole story isn't a fever dream itself.
> 
> enjoy!!!

**29th July 1894**

_ [Hotel Danieli, Riva degli Schiavoni] _

* * *

“I feel like I’m being hounded,” Beverly says, voice low and weary, eyes downcast. “I feel like they’re all—looking at me.”

“Say the word,” Richie says, offering her his arm with theatric chivalry, ‘and I will make a fool of myself of such severity they’ll soon be too absorbed by gawking at me to spare you another glance.’

She smiles, but it’s a wan thing. “A knight and jester—By Jove,” she says, wonderingly, and squeezes Richie’s arm affectionately as they draw through the foyer, “fortune has smiled upon me.”

Richie feigns bowing, as after a performance. “You alone appreciate me.”

Bev is quiet as they draw into the main salon, populated sparsely with the usual evening crowd, and Richie leads to the sofa in the corner. She watches him fill two glasses with bourbon, brows furrowed, face propped on one hand. 

“Ah, look at us,” she says at length, with a deprecating laugh, accepting the drink. “We’re miserable, both of us.”

“ _À votre santé_ ,” Richie replies merrily, raising his glass. “To lost causes.”

Weary, and with a heavy feeling in his heart, he casts his eyes around the room, picking out the long-term residents.

First, the artist. Haggard yet sharp-eyed chap, seeming perpetually withdrawn into his thoughts, as though beguiled with some haunting dilemma—American, journalist, if memory serves, making notes in a well-worn notebook, drinking whisky. 

Donovan? Darby? _Denbrough_. 

The artist is accompanied by Miss Phillips—a handsome young woman of a petulant countenance, carrying herself with the haughty disinterest of an exclusive socialite of an established name. Having spent most of his year loitering at Paris’s most eclectic and discerning salons, Richie can sense their dynamic—bound together by flight of fancy and circumstance, already bored to death with one another—even from a distance.

The artist’s friend, then, Mr Hanscom—an imposing bearded man of a surprisingly kind aspect, with whom Bev has made acquaintance a few years prior in Vienna, and who always bows his hat to her in utmost respect.

Talking of Vienna—Patricia Blum, an Austrian woman of a fragile carriage: young, well-dressed, with a distant, melancholy look in her pale blue eyes, accompanied by a church bell of a chaperone. 

And, finally, a treat: the true object of Tozier’s study, his private and unspoken delight: the family of three travelling, apparently, for the benefits of health. The dowager is a formidable woman, demanding, strict with the servers and critical of the provisions of the hotel. Her antics are mirrored, unappealingly, in the other of women—who, though decisively younger, appears wanting to transcend the threshold apace, and join the rank of stately matrons. 

Neither of them are the usual object of his attention. 

No, it’s the son—young as well, dressed meticulously in immaculate beige linens and holding himself stiffly as if in constant repressed agitation, with dark wavy hair and a tan complexion, giving him the air of a native masquerading amongst the _forestieri_. 

Edward Kaspbrak, he is called. _Eddie_ , as his mother addresses him. 

He is absent now, either dawdling with his arrival or having retired early. _Such a shame._

Disheartened at the lack of even such scarce amusement, Richie rubs at his temple, feeling an oncoming migraine. Across the room, he can see Hanscom making his tentative way towards Beverly. Taking it as his cue to escape, he excuses himself and walks out into the foyer. 

He aims at his usual spot—a mostly secluded archway at the back, opening into the canal for the deliveries from the _gondolieri_. Someone else is there, sat on the floor, leaning against the wall.

“Do you mind?” Richie asks, mildly, bringing out his cigarette case.

A tense male voice answers, “Not as long as you share.”

With a jolt, it strikes Richie that his companion is no one but Eddie himself: looking up at him with thesame strange eyes that have caught his attention in the first place. Wide, dark, striking in his narrow face; eyes of such poignant and faraway expression that they seem to look not into past his present reality, and somewhere else—further. 

“I wouldn’t take you for a smoker,” Richie mutters at length, perceiving the awkward length of his silence and holding out his cigarette case. 

The reply comes sharp and cutting as a whiplash.

“You know _nothing_ about me,” Eddie says, harshly, almost wrenching the cigarette free. 

Richie blinks, thrown off. He’d scarcely ever seen such ferocity in the other man, subdued and otherworldly as he’s seemed in passing, and yet now his voice is full of bitter and ill-constrained resentment.

“No, I don’t,” he says, at length. Though typically inclined to the contrary, he feels too tired to tease or provoke; feeling, still, heavy in his own existence. “Forgive me.”

Something in Kaspbrak’s drawn face shifts, just so, as he fixes Richie with a searching, sideways look. Some of the tension in his shoulder relents.

“It is fine,” he says, stiffly, though the heat in his voice is fading, “don’t worry about it.” Then, out of the blue, he ventures, “Have you a light?”

“Yeah,” Richie says, cigarette caught between his teeth, as he leans forward to light Eddie’s. Their hands brush, briefly, in passing as he does so—the other man’s skin is surprisingly warm given the chill of the evening air, almost burning in touch. Richie tries not to think of it.

He withdraws, head thrown back against the portal, and contents himself with watching Eddie through half-lidded eyes instead. 

And a sight it is, once more jarring, as if in defiance of Richie’s aesthetic appraisal: the angeltakes a drag like his life depends on it, starved, with both the ease of a man practiced at it and desperation of one habitually deprived of the liberty. His intense eyes flutter closed, features smoothing briefly in pleasure, as he exhales slowly and tilts his head back, mirroring Richie.

It’s—captivating. Perhaps too much; _inevitably_ too much. But Richie can’t stop himself from looking.

Captivating, yes. There they are, he and the character of Richie’s projections, with his elegant clothes that seem to stifle him so, and his slight person as though bursting with a barely held-in rage—suddenly thrown so improbably close together.

Uneasy, Richie looks away into the murky water. He doesn’t need—no, he cannot afford—to lose his head once more, not here. Not when he’s already feeling so shattered, swaying precariously at a brink of reason. He takes another drag of his cigarette.

“Insomnia?” comes Eddie’s sudden invocation, stymied slightly, like weariness has stolen over his earlier agitation. When he looks back to him, he finds the young man studying him openly with his intense eyes. 

The cold is gathering, air dewy and unwelcoming. Richie suppresses a shiver. 

“Unending,” he says, with an exaggerated sigh. “And, ah, warranted, I fear, by my profession—I am become a nocturnal animal.”

Unexpectedly, Eddie’s brows furrow.

“Profession?” he repeats, surprised. “And what does Count Rogan needs doing by night, to warrant such bizarre routines?”

It is, perhaps, the least probable thing he could’ve conceived of Eddie uttering. Thrown off balance completely, cigarette caught between his teeth, Richie blinks. 

Then, “What the deuce are you on about?” he asks, brusquely. “What does that devil have to do with it?”

Eddie’s frown deepens. “Aren’t you—I thought you and the Countess—”

Something cold and searing steals through Richie’s chest.

“Well, you thought wrong. She’s a friend,” he retorts, tersely. “A friend, too, not in some—horrific sense. Say what you will about _me_ , I won’t let her name be slandered—she’s suffered enough.”

Eddie’s face flushes darkly. “I’ve said nothing of the sort— _you’re_ implying it!”

“You didn’t need to _say_ it,” Richie sneers at him. “As if I cannot see the how all of you look at her—”

“Look at her?” Eddie repeats, eyes widening, his voice growing shrill eyes widening. “I don’t _look_ at her at all! God _damn_ it, I thought you were married to her only a minute ago—”

Unable to stop himself, Richie laughs, sharply.

“Then you must be the most oblivious man in the world,” he says, anger leaving his voice in a fleeting moment. “To confuse a Parisian comedian with a Count.”

“I am hardly in a position to _know_ many such comedians,” Eddie says heatedly, “to be able to distinguish them on sight! I don’t tend to frequent—what, am I amusing you? Am I a joke to you? What are you laughing at, pray tell!”

Richie’s snickers, softly. “You said I know nothing about you,” he manages at last, drawing his knees to himself and giving Eddie—face indignant once again—a lazy smile. “And yet you keep proving to me I do.”

“To hell with you!” Eddie explodes, “Who do you think you are, attacking me—”

Richie shrugs, taking another drag of his cigarette. He feels—odd, considering his dim and swarming despair from the earlier hours; oddly light-hearted. 

“I am not forcing you to keep me company,” he says, meekly. “For what it’s worth—I mean you no harm. Merely teasing. Force of habit, if you will—like the sleeplessness.”

Eddie purses his mouth, eyes wary and searching on Richie’s face, as if he’s gauging him for signs of treachery or further mischief at his expense. But Richie only smiles sheepishly, and looks out into the canal again. 

Damp briny wind glides into the alcove, carding through his hair. A moment passes. With a strange feeling in his chest, Richie notes Eddie makes no haste to leave. 

“Countess Rogan,” Eddie says at last, sounding more composed, if still a little harsh. “Why is she travelling with you, then?”

“She’s estranged from her husband. He was—is—an abominable man. Undeserving of her.”

He trails off, then continues, “She is looking into ways—to divorce him.”

There’s a certain stiffness to Eddie’s next words that doesn’t escape Richie’s notice. “Divorce?” he repeats, as if the word were in a foreign language. “But the talk—surely there’s talk—”

“Talk?” Richie echoes, dully. “Yes, probably. But—what is talk, when her freedom is at stake?”

There’s a hollow moment of silence, in which the cold seems to increase, stealing into Richie’s chest. He swallows, trying to place the sudden feeling of hopelessness, and banish it from his mind. 

Then Eddie speaks out, in a voice so low and stymied that Richie can’t help but look to him, startled. 

“Ah,” he says quietly, eyes fixed unseeingly somewhere outside. “I wouldn’t _know_.”

There’s something—so strange in the way he says it, so poignant once again the same distant way that’s made Richie feel so drawn to him in the first place.

It feels—familiar. Kindred.

Blinking again, trying to shake off the sudden feeling and dispel himself from the false familiarity, he ventures.

“Tell me about _your_ companion—the young lady.”

Eddie looks to him, sharply. Briefly, it’s his turn to look bewildered. Then something like understanding passes through his face and his features harden

“Oh—Myra,” he says, voice gone suddenly flat. Stilted. “Yes, we—we were introduced through our parents. She’s of an old family, very respected, from New York. We expect to be married next Spring.”

Well-phrased as it is, the description strikes Richie as bizarrely blank. He bites at his lower lip, frowning slightly at Eddie, who’s now looking at his hands with furrowed brows.

“What’s she like?” Richie mutters, indistinctly. The clumsy informality of his own venture doesn’t escape him, but curiously enough, Eddie doesn’t seem perturbed. He remains quiet for a moment, still looking at his hands—smooth, smaller than Richie’s, well-tended to. When he speaks again, his voice is uneven. 

“She is—capricious. Exacting. She takes pleasure in taking full control of her surroundings, and she—lives for talk. For society. Even though—she hardly wants to partake in it. She’s, ah—quite caring, I think. Perhaps exceedingly so. She tends to worry a lot, and—well, every two days she has a headache, you know … She is quite—what I mean to say, she—ah,” he laughs, breathlessly, nervously. “Don’t listen to me, I don’t know what I’m saying.”

There’s a pause. 

“ _Mon Dieu,_ ” Richie then says, in feigned shock. _“Mais Madame, elle est charmante!”_

Eddie colours again, looking abashed. “Oh, spare me the mockery.”

Richie shrugs his shoulders again. “But I thought we’ve established, Eddie, my dear,” he says mildly, offering Eddie another heartfelt smile, “I’m but a jester, mockery _is_ my mother tongue.”

His companion doesn’t seem to have an answer to that. It occurs to Richie in sudden clarity, that he has called him Eddie; entirely without noticing, and that he hasn’t protested.

Impulsively, Eddie says, “It’s a beneficial arrangement.”

Richie bows his head, “How very politic of you, _Mr Kaspbrak._ ”

“Not all of us can afford to be—vagabonds,” Eddie snaps back. “Some seek stability and—”

“And you, clearly, have been fortunate enough to find it,” Richie says, feeling oddly sick to his stomach. He smiles anyway, and forces his tone into one of affable indifference, “I am not one to judge—may you be happy with it, my friend.”

There’s a silence, strange, thready. Richie can’t bring himself to look at Eddie, too consumed with his own returning sense of utter misplacement. 

And then, “Are you?” he hears Eddie’s voice, hoarse, breaking. 

Turning his head, Richie is shocked to see the raw despair in his companion’s face. Swathed in smoke and the dewy cold light of a Venetian night, eyes suddenly shiny with emotion, Eddie looks like a haunting, hell-or-heaven-sent projection of Richie’s deepest fears and hopes.

“You are—free,” he continues, haltingly. His narrow chest is heaving. “Are you _happy?_ ”

The frightful, intimate acuity of the question undoes Richie’s volition—he’s disarmed. He stares into the other’s wide eyes, knowing his own to be just as revealing. At length, he swallows.

“I don’t—” and he cannot say it. Something forbids him from it. 

“No,” he admits instead, softly. “No, I am not.”

For a moment longer, Eddie keeps looking at him—an openness stretching between them that seems quite illogical. Then he swallows, and looks down. Richie watches his eyelashes scatter shadows upon the skin. 

“Forgive me,” Eddie says, voice still quite choked. He laughs quietly, an endearing, embarrassed sound. “I’ve no idea what came over me.”

“The moon,” Richie blurts, unthinkingly. Eddie raises his face at him, a new expression on it—as though softened. Looking to him in trust, as to a friend. Richie holds his gaze.

“The moon?” Eddie repeats, amused. “How so?”

An inkling of a smile, vague yet mischievous, tugging at the corner of his mouth. For a breathless second, Richie thinks to lean in and kiss him—just there, just off the centre of his mouth. 

“ _Si, la bella luna,_ ” he says instead, in such an atrocious accent that Eddie laughs, a sudden and heart-warming sound. Feeling suddenly giddy with it, Richie joins in. He leans forward, closer to Eddie—who doesn’t withdraw, smiling eyes fixed on Richie’s face.

He continues, in feigned solemnity, “Yes, haven’t you heard? The moon drives people mad, leads sailors astray, makes them—see strange visions, do strange things. It’s a well-known law.”

“A law of the moon,” Eddie mutters, smiling wider. It’s infuriatingly charming on him. Richie feels his heart strain, pitifully, inside his ribcage. “How quaint. I really am learning a lot tonight—and of such varied domains. I haven’t thought comedians to be so—”

“Wise?” 

“—enlightening,” Eddie says, smiling wider. 

Then suddenly, he frowns, a shadow passing through his features. A sharp fear grasps Richie—he leans back on instinct, fearing himself revealed. But Eddie’s hand chases his face, surprising him with a brief touch of fingers to the jaw.

“You’re—bleeding,” Eddie says hesitantly, baffled. 

“I—ah.” Richie’s nervous hands fly up to his face—and yes, for sure, a thick warm liquid is trickling from his nose. Cursed propensity—not unprecedented, not even typically traumatising. And yet now it feels like a shameful revelation. Something unclean, private, signalling an ill-placed emotion at best—that would surely drive a well-kept stickler of Kaspbrak’s kind away; and rightly so. 

Embarrassed, he shields his face with one hand and gropes in the pockets of his frock.

“Yes, ah—sorry. It happens, it does happen, I just—” His useless hands fumble with the garment, fruitlessly. “Let me just—”

“Oh, you are useless,” Eddie speaks out unexpectedly, suddenly irate. “Leave it! Do not move.”

Not knowing why, Richie listens, and stills obediently. With a thundering heart, he watches Eddie draw a pristine handkerchief deftly out of his buttonhole and then press it to Richie’s nose. Fearing movement to betray his own titillation, Richie holds completely still, breath held, and lets his eyes fall closed. 

Eddie’s ministrations are gentle but deliberate, practiced. After a moment, he takes Richie’s hand in his, unclenches his stiff fingers and presses the crumpled fabric into it. Finally, he guides Richie’s hand back to his nose, applying light pressure.

“There—it’s done,” he hears Eddie’s voice, soft, as the other man withdraws his patient hands. There’s a small smile on his face. “Now you won’t bleed to death.”

“Thank you, doctor,” Richie says, weakly. “Any orders for the patient to follow?”

“Yes,” Eddie tells him, brazenly. “A restraint in _talking_.”

“Ah,” Richie enunciates with a feigned air of tragedy. “ _Ce n’est pas possible!_ He shall die.”

Eddie’s smile widens as he shakes his head. Then, taking Richie by surprise, instead of returning to his place, he draws himself closer and sits next to him, shoulder to shoulder, head tilted back.

“I’ll keep vigil, then,” Eddie says, quietly, looking down onto his hands. There’s a small speck of blood on the juncture between his thumb and index finger—mindlessly, he brushes it away with his other hand. “So he doesn’t die alone.”

Richie bites his lip. “ _Merci._ ”

“I’ll expect it returned, of course,” he mutters. “I mean the handkerchief.”

Richie is dazed anew. He smells peculiar—a curious blend of camphor and cologne. Something sharp, a fragrance with a sting, but mellowed out by an imprecise sweetness. 

_Captivating_. 

“Of course,” he says, hoarsely.

**30th July 1894** ****

_ [Ponte della Paglia]  _

* * *

Richie comes around to a singing. A low male voice, hoarse and wistful, carrying a rueful tune in the cantabile dialect of the native Venetians. Roused from sleep yet still hazy, Richie blinks tentatively. The light seems too harsh—white and lucid yet, belonging to the early morning only, it slants off the water blindingly. A rush of saline-scented wind, chilling, pierces him. He shivers.

Belatedly, he perceives his position: he is propped against a pillar in the portal to the palazzo, body stiffened from sleep and cold. There’s a weight, warm and strange, pressed to his side. The realisation strikes him arrow-sharp, bringing back the senses. Eddie Kaspbrak.

Eddie’s head is collapsed to Richie’s shoulder, warm forehead tucked into the side of his neck. He is still asleep—mouth parted, chest moving rhythmically with measured breaths, lashes low on his cheeks. One of his hands rests thrown across Richie’s leg, palm of it open as if reaching toward the other’s hand.

For a moment, Richie is too stunned to act—a dizzying mixture of sharp fear and mindless excitement rendering him futile, he sits stricken. 

He becomes aware of the distant chatter of fruit vendors and the scrape of a gondola being tied to a _palina_ , bringing in the fruit and refreshments for the hotel guests. The threat of being discovered, of assumptions being made, rouses him back into movement—leaping, he grasps Eddie’s shoulder and shakes him.

“Mr—Mr Kaspbrak,” he mutters, voice throaty. “Edward—Eddie. _Eddie_.”

Eddie’s eyes fly open—for a moment he is bewildered, blinking up at Richiewide-eyed and uncomprehending. Then his eyes brows furrow and he straightens. 

“What—” he croaks, voice rattled.

Ungainly, Richie rises to his feet and extends a hand to help Eddie up. Still dazed, the other man accepts it. 

“We fell asleep,” he states the obvious, abashed. “The fruit vendors will come soon—we should move.”

Eddie grunts something in response, still visibly hazy. Even so, he follows Richie out of the back alley and towards San Marco. He is silent until they reach Ponte della Paglia, uncannily deserted at such small hours. There he leans heavily on the balustrade, face upturned to the sun and briny wind. It is carding through his hair, wayward and wavy from humidity. 

Uncertain as what to do, and wrecked with anxiety, Richie hovers next to him. 

“Do you have another cigarette?” Eddie asks at last, voice wan.

“Yes,” Richie says, patting down his frock once again, “I do—let me fetch it.”

With his jittery hands, he manages at last to procure his engraved cigarette case and hands one of the cigarettes to Eddie, who accepts it without comment, face drawn in focus, and takes a drag. There it is again—the strange air of easy kinship between them, an intimacy that seems lacking any logical foundation. And yet—

Strange, _too_ , is the feeling that captures Richie; shivery and mind-scattering. He is taken, momentarily, with the observation of the shivery morning light diluting the dark of Eddie’s irises with a tinge of warmth as he stares ahead, into the water.

He finds himself speaking once again, without consideration. “You are different—than how I thought you’d be.”

Instantly, he curses himself, realising the implication. Eddie closes his eyes and rubs at them with his free hand.

“You’ve—thought about me?” he murmurs vaguely, and Richie struggles to suppress the flush of warmth in his face. But Eddie seems distracted still. 

“Yes, well—” he finishes, irked. “I’m not used to spending nights like this, I’m a little out of sorts.”

“No, I meant—in general,” Richie says, unknowing why he presses the matter, and painfully aware of its incriminating nature. “You are different than I—than you seemed.”

For a moment, Eddie doesn’t move, eyes cast upon the Grand Canal; the water sizzling almost white in scattered sunlight. 

“I feel different,” he says at last. “Changed.”

Richie looks to him. “How do you mean?”

Eddie seems barely conscious of speaking out loud, face furrowed in deep reverie, unseeing eyes still upon the water.

“I feel like I’ve been—sleepwalking,” he speaks out finally, in a distant voice. “And someone has shaken me awake.”

A peculiar feeling steals through Richie’s chest, something hazy and inarticulate, yet dismissible. He reflects upon the words, following Eddie’s eyes to the shivery light captured in the rippled, wind-wracked.

“Well, then,” he says at length, softly. “As they say— _buongiorno_.”

Somehow, this draws Eddie’s attention—gaze flicking to Richie, who swallows, withstanding it.

“Have breakfast with me,” he offers; spontaneous, erratic. Hopelessly foolish, he _knows_ ,as he knows his fascination to expand tidally with each passing second. He tries to conceal it still, but his heartbeat betrays him with a quickened pace already. 

He flounders, “An espresso, like Italians—at the Piazzetta, Florian’s or—somewhere else, I don’t mind! I know a place right off—”

“Breakfast?” Eddie interjects, sounding surprised. He is frowning again. “How on _earth_ would I explain that to—” he trails off, feebly, then rubs at his eyes again. “Ah, _damn_ you, be it what it would. My mother will be vexed regardless—pray the coffee is decent, at least.” 

He bites at his lip. “Yes, I’ll have breakfast with you.”

_ [Caffé Florian, Piazza di San Marco ]  _

Eddie is fixing his second cigarette with impatient hands.

He is changed, Richie thinks, only now made truly corporeal by the strange mercurial light:brisk, threaded with a nearly manic energy. 

There’s something charming in it that Richie won’t allow himself to name: in the deft swift movements of his sun-kissed hands, the working of his throat as he smokes, the keen, piercing way of his looking. His hair wayward from the briny wind, clothes disarrayed just so, he seems—suddenly so _human._

“So,” Eddie proclaims suddenly, as their coffee and breakfast is served in glass and silverware, “Tell me more about yourself. How did you become—a comedian?”

Richie winces; then masks it with a strained smile, taking on the task of pouring them coffee. It is strong, aromatic—the fragrance alone seems to elevate his senses towards further awareness. Through lidded eyes he observes, discreetly, Eddie’s dainty wrists upon the white cloth of the table. 

“A long series of unfortunate coincidences,” he says, cheerily. “And ill-advised acquaintances.”

Eddie huffs, snuffing out his cigarette and accepting the coffee passed to him over the table. Their fingers intercept— _brush_ , almost, yet not actually. 

“Still—it takes a certain, how to say it—bravado. Does it not? To—to make a career out of persiflage. How does one even begin?”

_How indeed?_ In the gradually warming sunlight, under the assessing eyes of his strange companion, Richie feels all at once viciously exposed.

“I wasn’t always a comedian,” he amends finally, busying himself with the slicing of fruit and breadstuff. “In fact, I was trained to be a pianist—I _am_ trained, decently enough.”

“And yet you never pursued it?” Eddie questions, disbelieving.

“No, I did. New York, actually—like your, ah, fiancée. But the society—” Richie hesitates, sieving words deliberately in vain effort to shelter the truth. “Ah, let me put it this way—I was never approved of, no matter my family’s valiant efforts to civilise me. A lost cause—and my father seemed to share this belief, demanding _i_ fend for myself—and disowned me. I fled to Europe before my presence grew despised, but—I hardly think anyone grieves my absence.”

“I see,” Eddie mutters, cryptic. His eyes are downcast and he is tilting his coffee cup languidly in one hand; his perpetual moody frown contorting his features. Richie finds himself more and more fond of it. 

_Do you know now?_ he can’t help but think, melancholy, fearing the morning coming to an end. _Have you seen through me?_

“Is this your idea, then?” Eddie demands, abruptly, “Of—making a decent life for yourself? Nightlife at the Moulin Rouge?”

“Decent?” Richie repeats, smiling forcibly. “No, I think I—I think I’m a lost cause for that, too. The types at Montmartre—wrong crowd, Eddie, _dear_.”

“I didn’t mean—in that sense,” Eddie relents, colouring lightly. “I meant in a sense of—of having value. Yesterday, you said you weren’t—” there Eddie hesitates, as if wary of bringing up their moonlit encounter, and speaks softly. “That you weren’t happy. But your life, there. I suppose I am asking, do you find it—meaningful?”

Richie tenses, suddenly cold. The fresh juice from red oranges tastes sour in his mouth. When he looks up, he finds Eddie’s peculiar eyes fixed on him; intent, unyielding. It’s almost too much to endure.

He hears his own voice, stiff through his stilted vocal cords. “I don’t think _anything_ has meaning.”

The trouble is that Eddie is _looking_ at him: really looking, like hardly anyone cares to look. It is eerie, disquieting still, to be witnessed so thoroughly—suddenly and without warning—despite own prolonged and convoluted effort to conceal himself in vacuous and insulating negligence. To have the most twisted and vulnerable in him gazed upon directly, dissentingly, and brought out to light in such a fortnight manner. 

“How convenient,” Eddie says at length. Richie almost shivers.

“Convenient?” 

“To absolve yourself,” Eddie says, “from consequences.”

Something inside Richie twists, painfully.

“What is better, then—to _pretend?_ ” he demands, feeling suddenly hunted. “Uphold—uphold some farce of values you cannot even believe yourself! Just for the sake of—of being agreeable? To—to all those kind good people with their spotless lives who will turn away as soon as—” he breaks off, swallowing. On the table, his hand is balled into a fist. “No, damn it, I shall not pretend. I’ve always thought that dishonest.”

“Honesty,” Eddie retorts, cold, “is a liberty many cannot afford.”

“You assume I always could?” Richie asks, mindlessly. The question is too revealing—but it is too late, he’s already speaking, rushed and agitated. He is feverish now. “No. No—I learned the hard way.”

When he looks back up onto Eddie’s face, he finds his dark eyes hazy, clouded with some unspoken feeling. 

“I should not have said convenient,” he says, at length. “I worded it wrong again.”

“What did you _mean_ to say?” 

For a moment, Eddie is quiet. Then he speaks, haltingly. 

“Don’t you—have you never felt you need … an _axis_ , that without it … without something to cling to, horrendous as it may be, and oppressive—you’ll become nothing? You’ll become—soweak and insubstantial, that you’ll lose control—over everything. That if you let go there will be nothing for you—nothing but to _float_ , aimless. Towards nothing. I fear—I fear I would.”

Richie blinks, disarmed once again with the blunt force of the statement. He feels dazed.

“I think, in my case, it wasn’t a matter of choice,” he manages at last, weakly. “One day I came to, and found myself afloat.”

Eddie blinks, disquieted. His eyes soften once more. Suddenly acutely self-conscious, Richie looks to his hands. 

“And yet I can’t help but—wonder,” Eddie then says, hesitantly. “How would it be to live differently.”

“I could show you.”

Now, this—it is _madness_ , he knows, deep in his bones, he knows it.

But Eddie endures his gaze with fierce defiance.

“Then _show_ me,” he says.

_ [Mercati di Rialto]  _

It’s strange—to witness Venice so deserted. Or, no, not deserted—there’s life rousing itself from sleep gaily in every corner—fruit vendors and old women carrying woven baskets of laundry arguing in their euphonic dialect, birds flocking to the docks to pick at the delivery barges, shutter windows opening into sunlight, children shouting.

Yet it is different, Eddie feels—entirely. The world seems changed; emerged from the fumes of tobacco and rustle of crinoline and satin, of stilted chatter repeating litanies of monotonous conversation that means nothing and tells nothing. 

They’ve been wandering for a while, seemingly without aim, through the labyrinthine net of canals and alleyways—and have now come to a stop at one of the stands at the market by Ponte Rialto, heavy with ripe produce. Eddie lets himself stand by, watchful, tracing the awkward movements of Richie’s hands mimicking the locals’ lively manner, listening to his broken French-suffused Italian as he barters with the sullen merchant. 

He feels stunned, as if suffering from a solar stroke. Everything in his surroundings strikes him as enticing, illogically, inflicting on him a sudden and incontinent wanting. A wanting for—for—ah, _everything_. Eddie shivers, despite his efforts. For more of this, feeling, perceptiveness, more of this strange and bright clarity of mind. 

He feels himself on the verge of crossing some faint and fearsome border he’s never before approached, past the safe sheath of what’s known and practiced—past all that he’s talked about at breakfast. The axis—only yesterday, so solid and unshakeable—has slipped from his grasp, the world around it falling asunder. 

Richard Tozier: American expatriate, Parisian musician and nightlife comedic performer—Eddie’s strange bedfellow, and companion in this bizarre journey into this day of chaotic sunlight. 

He himself upright from the stall, wandering back to where Eddie stands leaning against a mooring pole. He is tall—has to hunch slightly under the canopy shielding the _mercati_ from the sunny glare—and lanky. Holding out a hand to Eddie, he offers him a small ripe clementine. 

“Taste it,” he instructs, as Eddie accepts it—hyperconscious even of the brush of skin against skin in fleeting touch. “I’ll vouch you haven’t tasted any better.”

“Is that not—unsanitary?” Eddie says, by habit, watching Richie peel the skin and shove the ripe sunny fruit into his mouth whole. 

Richie fixes him with a look that’s teasing, but blessedly not unkind.

“You’ll live,” he says quietly, in warm amusement. Not knowing why—again—Eddie feels himself flush. 

“Where are we going?” he ventures, beginning to pick the fruit apart fastidiously in his hands. Richie gestures broadly at the path ahead of them.

“Wherever your heart desires, _Eduardo, caro mio_ ,” he quips, a new spring to his step as he tosses the fruit in the air. It is quite puzzling, to Eddie, how he, too, appears changed—from the stooping gaunt figure at the portal of the hotel, looking out pallid and despairing into the murky night, into this—this mystifyingly charming man of atypical habits and a chaotic disposition. 

In truth, Eddie has watched him—for a while, now. Back at the hotel, among the other guests. Tall and broad, he stood out in the crowd, accompanied by a refined red-haired woman in expensive garments. He’d wear a particular expression—stiff and guarded—that has struck him even then as wretchedly familiar, concealing some deep-sealed anguish underneath it. Eddie has watched him—and he remembers wondering, somewhere in the dim haze of his perpetually clouded mind, the making of this look, the identity of the man it belongs to. 

“I’ve had my eyes set,” Richie is now saying, merrily, “on an abandoned palazzo—it seems to have a secret patio and a garden, and I can hear birds inside each time I pass by, but it’s visibly uninhabited. I’ve been crafting a little plan of exploration before I leave for Paris—”

Despite himself, Eddie interrupts, horrified. He lowers the fruit he’s opened without tasting it. “You mean to break into a palazzo? Are you completely mad?”

Richie shrugs his shoulders nonchalantly, swivelling as he walks, so that he faces Eddie.

“It is abandoned,” he repeats. “Besides—what’s life without a little adventure—and I fancied you wanted a have a taste of life, no? And don’t you worry—should we be detained, the Countess will know to look for me, and intervene.”

A brief distressing image enters Eddie’s mind—of Myra’s vexed and aghast face upon learning her fiancé has been detained for trespassing, accompanied by a shrill echo of admonition in her voice—yet it is banished swiftly by sudden distraction, taking shape of Richie stumbling over a coil of rope.

“Careful!” Eddie exclaims, leaping on instinct and grasping the other man by his lapels to keep him upright, thus preventing at the last moment from toppling into the canal. 

He talks on, rushed, unthinking, “Ah, you blasted fool—have you any idea how vile this water is? You could’ve caughtsomething—hectic fever!—and then even I wouldn’t be able to help you, you—you dunce.”

Then he adds, a little breathless, “How have you survived, thus far, without—”

_Without me,_ he almost says, but holds himself back frantically at last second. Squeezing the fabric of Richie’s frock, he realises he’s dropped the clementine.

“I, _uh_ ,” Richie stutters, belatedly. His hand has come up, blindly, to steady himself on Eddie’s shoulders—both of them stilled in place as in a bizarre waltz. He is gazing up at Eddie with shock-widened eyes behind his spectacles—eyes with are, as Eddie notes, a clear pale blue.

“We haven’t—discussed your profession yet,” Richie then says, abruptly and in a dissonantly shrill voice; so out of the blue that all Eddie can do is blink, confounded. 

“My—profession?” he repeats, uncertainly. Blinking as well, Richie nods.

And then he straightens swiftly, drawing them both back inland and and dusting off his velvet frock coat in an abashed gesture. He gives an apologetic smile, head bowed slightly, regaining his advantage in height over Eddie. 

“Yes, your profession, doctor,” Richie says, a smile in his voice. “Are you really a medic? You do seem to have a lot to say—to advise—about my well-being.”

It’s an innocuous remark, a quip, and yet Eddie feels himself colour, face heating. Ah, does he not, after all? Have a lot to say—is it not _too_ much? To suddenly feel such _concern_ over the fate of a stranger? His pulse stutters, quickened, and he looks away to the water as he starts forward along the canal.

He senses that Richie follows, his arms folded behind him—listening closely to Eddie’s response.

“I—no, not quite,” he says, unusually embarrassed. “I am a legal advisor.”

He can hear Richie inhale sharply, and hazards a sideways glance. The other man’s eyes are alight with excitement. 

“Oh, _Mr Kaspbrak_ ,” he drawls, and something implicating in his lowered tone almost sends a shiver down Eddie’s spine, “I am scandalised—a man of society, a man of the law, traipsing around blithely through a foreign city with a good-for-nothing vagabond? Considering intrusion? Seeking—adventure. How frightful.”

He should be offended. By Jove, he should speak out _now_ , reprovingly, and scold the Philistine who by all accounts allows himself an air of confidence in his remarks regarding Eddie’s person he has no right to—he should defend his dignity, and walk off, breaking from the fatal trance. 

But he can’t, not with how warm and rushed the blood in his veins runs, not with how fast his heart paces at the teasing smile on Richie’s face. 

“I told you,” he says then, instead, raising his burning face to meet Richie’s eyes, “not to presume you know me.”

A shadow passes through the other’s face, something like brief wonder, dispersing the air of flippancy once again as he draws to a halt—Eddie mirroring his actions on instinct. The wind cards through Richard’s hair, and outlined by sunlight the dark lock halo around his face, disarrayed. He looks—younger now, boyish. Somehow, irrationally—so dear; as if well-known.

Eddie’s breath catches.

“Let us go,” he says, quickly, picking up his pace once again. “Before we—succumb to your dastardly schemes, we’ll need to make a detour.”

Richie nods, in feigned solemnity. “ _Where to, m’lord?_ ” 

“The—pharmacist,” Eddie says, and instantly feels his spirits subdued. He cannot explain why, not even to himself—there is no shame in following orders, after all, especially those of a respected medic of an established stature—but the feeling is similar to the brief memory of Myra, constricting his throat briefly in a reminder of the dreary routine of his proper life. “I have a prescription to fill.”

When Richie speaks again, Eddie hears concern in his voice. “Why—are you ill?”

“I—yes, well—no—not quite,” Eddie flounders, finding it suddenly unendurable to look in Richie’s direction. “It is—complicated, ah, it is a … precaution—advised by my doctor, you see, I have a disposition for—”

He breaks off, embarrassed. “It’s no matter. It will not take long.” 

_ [Farmacia Ai Due San Marchi]  _

The entrance into the hush of the pharmacy is like a venture into a different dimension. The shop is furnished with dark burl wood, walls adorned with majolica vases filled to the brim with spices and materials needed for the preparation of medications. It seems as though stilled in time: the morbid quiet, combined with the apparent absence of human presence swathes it in a dusty oppressive air. 

Suddenly, without notice, Eddie feels faint. He grips the counter desperately, trying not to let on his momentary weakness, but Richie must sense it somehow, as he shuffles closer—tall, maddening as he looms over Eddie and mutters, indistinctly, “Are you alright?”

“Yes,” Eddie manages, with difficulty. “It is nothing, just a spell—the medication will help, it—”

“A spell! By Jove, no wonder,” Richie hisses viciously in his ear, startling Eddie, “this place is wicked frightening—can you smell it? The odd—whatever it is, pungent—acid? I feel like I’ll be etherised and carted off to a lazaretto any moment now, to chop off my limbs and drown me in the lagoon!”

Taken by surprise, Eddie bursts out laughing, immediately inspiring a smile on Richie’s face as well. 

Abashed, Eddie presses the back of his hand to his mouth to suppress further laughter, looking up to Richie in amused reproach.

“Stop that,” he commands, muffled. By some miracle, he feels better already, heart resuming its usual pace, and feeling returning to his hands. “Someone is going to hear you.

“Ah, let them! I will not go for slaughter without struggle!”

“Be _quiet_ , you madman.”

There is a sudden sound—and the narrow oaken door leading to the other room swings open. Inside, two men are gathered. One of them, tall and dark and dressed in a white smock of a pharmacist, is crushing a powdered substance scrupulously with a pestle in a small ceramic bowl. He appears to be listening to the second, who talks, gesturing animatedly in the air.

“I am telling you—” he is saying, in excitation. “This is a breakthrough. These papers—they will solve the mystery, the case—I am this close to uncovering—”

“Have you paid attention to my directions?” the pharmacist’s voice, lower and patient, cuts in. “You mustn’t overdose, William—it is imperative you listen well.”

“I have, I have,” the other replies, waving his hand impatiently. “I always listen to you, Michael, don’t you perturb yourself over me—worry better over your fair medic here—” he points to the window, under which Eddie spots a third man: sitting with his head propped upon one hand, a look of quiet anguish staining his face. “He is clearly suffering from a bad case of—”

“He’ll be _fine_ ,” the pharmacist says curtly. “Do you remember your dose?”

“I _do_ remember my dose, you needn’t worry so much. Though I am charmed to—” the shorter man trails off, taking notice of Eddie and Richie at the counter. 

“Oh, look here,” he says, mildly, hiding the sachet with the powdered substance swiftly in his frock’s inner pocket. “Mr Tozier—Mr Kaspbrak—fancy meeting you here, fellows.”

“Mr Denbrough,” Richie speaks out, amicably—surprising Eddie, who’s been meaning to demand how on earth does the man know his name, and now recognises him dimly from the blurry array of American guests at Danieli. 

Then Richie throws in, with another saccharine smile, “Ailing?”

“A trifle,” Denbrough says brightly, mirroring the expression, which Eddie doesn’t comprehend. “Well—I have to go.” He first bows gallantly to the pharmacist, “Good day, Mr Hanlon—thank you for my, ah. Medication,” then nods at the distraught man under the window. “Mr Uris. All the best.”

Eddie frowns as Denbrough skids out of the shop, a spring in his step. Hanlon, the pharmacist, stares after him with a look of fond reproach on his face, before inquiring, “What can I help you with, gentlemen?”

Richie takes Eddie by surprise again by angling himself over his shoulder to peer into the small room, “Aye, Friar Laurence!” he announces loudly, startlingly close, “Fair Juliet here needs her vial of poison to— _ow_ —”

He is cut off as Eddie elbows him in the stomach. “Pay him no mind,” he grits out, addressing the pharmacist and trying valiantly school his traitorous features into composure . “I shall be needing camphor, and smelling salts—lungwort as well, if you have it.”

The pharmacist nods in affirmation and goes to the cabinet to fetch the ingredients. Meanwhile, Richie angles his face towards Eddie, their noses nearly brushing due to the awkward arrangement.

“Whatever for?” Richie asks curiously, in a lowered voice. Flustered, Eddie wrenches himself away abruptly, approaching the shelves on the other side of the room. 

“Faintness of heart and—and breathing difficulty,” he stammers, harried, reaching out compulsively to order the ornate containers. “I have a weak lung, and _—_ it is all, you understand, recommended by my doctor—mother’s doctor, that is. There is a dampness in the air, and—there is nothing wrong with—nothing wrong with listening to a trained professional!”

“Well, who am I to argue with _trained professionals_ ,” Richie mutters, voice suddenly meek. “Though if I may say so, you strike me anything but _weak_ this morning, Eddie, my dear—far from it.”

“Ah, what do you know,” Eddie mutters sharply, belying the strange sensation of warmth rushing as if in agreement through his system.

“ _Scio me nihil scire_ ,” Richie counters, infuriatingly. “I know that I know noth—”

Eddie glares. “You are _impossible_.”

Poised across the room, Richie makes no further advances to approach Eddie, instead leaning against the counter and picking idly at the cuff of his shirt. Indeed, he isn’t even _looking_ at Eddie. 

Against any sound logic, Eddie finds himself irrationally stung _—_ or else, disappointed. Trying to conceal the embarrassment and irritation somehow, he peers into the back room.

He is surprised to find the young medic by the window watching him with an unforgiving shrewdness of weary blue eyes. It is irrational _—_ no, _more_ than that, absurd _—_ but Eddie feels himself caught red-handed in some terrible lie, convoluted and distressing, though he cannot comprehend its nature. 

Stepping backwards as if scalded, draws in a sharp breath. Richie has been right _—_ the air is heavy with a cloying scent. 

“As a matter of fact,” Eddie finds himself saying, in a changed voice, glancing desperately to Richie _—_ who raises his eyebrows at him in silent question. “I won’t be needing the medication after all. I have to _—_ consult my doctor first. Forgive me, Mr Hanlon _,_ have a good day.”

At that, nearly lightheaded with some strange panicked elation, he swivels on his heel and bolts out of the shop into the stark sunlight.

_ [Ca Dario] _

“Forgive me _—_ I hardly know what came over me,” he repeats himself, stymied. He keeps his hands folded behind him, and his eyes trained ahead. Sunlight catches on the billowing laundry hung on threads stretching between the open windows above them, rendered soft and gauzy by the white cotton. Afternoon is sinking upon the city, honey-thick and lulling into idle drowsiness. Despite the earlier agitation he feels calmer now, perhaps even content, as he walks, raising eyes his face to the sky. 

“There is hardly anything to forgive,” Richie counters, affably. He still hasn’t revealed his intended destination, and Eddie marvels, privately, that he doesn’t _mind—_ no, far from it, he feels uncommonly happy to continue on wandering without aim or care, even indefinitely.

He doesn’t voice the sentiment, thinking it somewhat silly. Instead, he gazes sideways at Richie instead, walking with his dancelike steps, head hitched up carelessly to watch the facades of the buildings they pass. There is something uncanny about him _—_ a sort of childlike wonder, a genuine delight at life _—_ that he seems to stifle ordinarily, masked under the sleek, scathing air of flippant wit. Intrigued as he’s been by these pretences _,_ Eddie warms at the touch of sweetness he finds hidden underneath. 

“Aha!” Richie exclaims at once, disrupting his thoughts and ducking closer unexpectedly to thread his arm under Eddie’s. Again, he doesn’t mind _—_ though usually shying away from others’ touch, repelled _—_ he doesn’t mind, leaning near-instantly into the touch instead, as if to remedy his earlier mistake from the pharmacy. 

Richie veers close as if to conspire covertly, and points ahead with his hand. With some puzzling effort, Eddie tears his curious eyes away from his profile, tracing the line of his sight instead.

“Look _—_ see the palazzo there?” Richie murmurs, voice low and thrumming with excitement. “That’s our _ultima finis_. It has quite the history. The locals call it _The House of No Return,_ as it is rumoured to lead all its owners to death or ruin. All started ages ago, 15th century I believe, with the daughter of a so-called Giovanni Dario, the first owner, committing suicide _—”_

“I shall stop you right _there_ ,” Eddie chimes in, alarmed, eyes back upon Richie’s face, this time void of wonderment. “You can’t possibly want anything to do with this wretched place _—_ or do you?”

Pouting slightly, Richie tilts his head to gaze into Eddie’s now-frowning face, a picture of innocence. It is somewhat distracting, to note how large his eyes are behind the magnifying lenses of his spectacles

Eddie swallows, caught in the whirlwind of blurry and conflicting impulses he cannot understand; focused on compelling himself to keep frowning. 

“Eddie,” Richie says, meekly. “It’s fascinating. _Exciting—”_

As in some infuriating chess-game, Eddie averts his eyes from the other man’s face, this time to fix the tenement with a look of appraising scepticism. Instantly, Richie quietens, waiting for his verdict in docile silence.

“And how,” Eddie speaks at last, “on _earth_ do you plan to get in?”

He senses Richie’s delight rather than sees it, fearing that if he looks, he’ll lose the last of his resolve and reason. Instead, he keeps his pretence of cloudy disapproval, folding his arms as Richie skids across the square, motioning for him to follow.

And follow he does, though a shadow of doubt _—_ at this, at his own ill-advised and exhilarating carelessness _—_ enters his mind briefly, before being hastilybanished.

Richie leads him through a narrow niche, into the patio. At the centre of it, uneven and wayward, a cluster of orange trees grow, bending in the sultry light. 

He doesn’t know where the memory comes from: air warm and strident with cicadas, sweet with summer flowers, fingers sticky with the juice of stolen red oranges. Dimly, he remembers running, around a similar patio, chasing someone behind the cloisters—someone who will turn, surely, any moment now. 

And now, as in some strange parallel, Richie circles the square in long strides, emerging intermittently from the shadow of behind the cloisters. He _does_ turn, walking backwards, and holds his hand out to Eddie.

Feeling like a child, led by some strange pull or incantation; Eddie takes it.

They come up to a ledge under a half-opened window, shielded in an alcove. With one last smile, Richie lets go of Eddie’s hand and plants his squarely on the sun-warmed stone to heave himself up.

“Madman,” Eddie says, softly, confused by the warmth feeling in his chest.

Richie is so tall and broad—well-built, like a soldier—it is bizarre to see him lever himself inside through the half-open window, head-first, arms and legs following. 

“You are—impossible,” Eddie says, he says, despite himself. He cannot stop smiling. 

“Aha!” Richie exclaims, merry. “ _Pour votre divertissement, monsieu_ —ah!”

With both a resounding thunk and a sharp crash of shattering glass, he falls inside. 

“Richie!” Eddie shouts, leaping towards the window. “Have you hurt yourself?”

“… No?” comes a muffled reply from inside. “Yes. Uh—a little.”

“Oh, you hopeless—just wait, and try not to make it worse,” Eddie instructs, groping the rough window frame for purchase and then swinging himself up lithely onto the balustrade.

“Aye aye, captain,” comes Richie’s faint voice from inside. “Meanwhile, to entertain you; a report from the expedition is due. As predicted, a few quite splendid birds inside, indeed. And—a fresco.”

Eddie pays him no mind, attempting to slot himself gradually into the half-open alcove without slitting his skin on the shards of glass Richie punctured. The habitually immaculate linen of his trousers drags coarsely against the dust-filthy stone as he does, staining inevitably. A fleeting reflection passes through his focused mind, that less than a day before he’d think crawling into someone’s property through a broken window to help an injured and reckless stranger not merely improbable, but simply _absurd_.

“There,” he gasps, straining with effort as he lowers himself tentatively to the dark wooden floor. “I’m in. See, you can do it without—”

He pauses at the sight before him, quite disarmed. 

Richie lies spread out in a narrow strait of light strewn on the old wooden floor from the window. His hazy eyes are fixed above, as if he were caught out stargazing—and he holds one of his hands in the other, pressed to his chest where a small red stain is forming. Light scatters eerie shadows on his skin and clothes, making him look only half-alive, as if painted in oil by Titian. 

“Look,” he says faintly, “look at the ceiling.”

“You’re bleeding,” Eddie says, disregarding both the remark and the strange constricting feeling in his chest as he steps over the shards of glass, and then kneels on the floor by Richie’s side. “Give me your hand, I’ll wrap it up.”

“I have your handkerchief,” Richie reminds him, in a thin voice, as Eddie unclasps his stiff fingers hand firmly from where he keeps clutching at the injured hand and examines the narrow incision on the palm. 

“Then you’ll have another,” he murmurs, half-absently, reaching into his breast pocket for the spare, and the little engraved flask. “You can make an altar out of them.”

At that, Richie finally looks at him, blinking. “Blasphemy,” he mutters. 

Then, in helpless curiosity, “Do you always carry strange potions on your person?”

“No—only when I’m with _you_ ,” Eddie says nonsensically, unscrewing the vial. Attentive to his task, he doesn’t meet Richie’s eyes. “It’s not a potion, it is an antiseptic—it pays to keep up with modern medicine, you know—it will sting now.

“Ah, what’s a sting—in the face of such a sight,” Richie sighs. “An angel’s come to visit me.”

As Eddie frowns up at him, feeling—inconceivably—somehow flustered, Richie swallows, hazy eyes skittering away, and points to the ceiling with his uninjured hand. 

Looking up at last, Eddie takes in the sudden flurry of colour and shape spread out above his head—angels, yes, and saints, depicted in fading paint on the canvas of the ceiling. He blinks, starting, as a flock of small birds—sparrows, likely—tears itself from one of the corners and careens across the room. 

“How odd,” Eddie says at length, returning to his ministrations. He wraps the now-clean appendage tightly with the scrap of white cloth embroidered with his initials, then fastens it in place, carefully with a knot. Somehow, quite unknowing why, he feels like he cannot allow himself to make a mistake—like it is tremendously important he doesn’t

“There,” he says again, feeling suddenly sheepish as he overturns Richie’s bandaged hand in the air. “All patched up.”

“Ah! The patient will live,” Richie says. “I am very much obliged to you, Doctor Watson.”

“Nonsense,” Eddie says, with a huff. “You’d do better trying to avoid— _ah—_ ”

The thought escapes him, distracted entirely by Richie tugging at Eddie’s hand where it still holds on to his and bringing it to his mouth, where he presses a light kiss to the knuckles.

“ _Grazie_ ,” he says, some strange note in his lowered voice, releasing Eddie’s hand.

“Ah—” Eddie repeats, feeling himself flush hotly under the unreadable gaze of Richie’s light blue eyes. He tugs his hand back and pats down his frock, inanely, as he rises to his feet. 

The strange warmth seems to have travelled from his hands and through the veins and nerve endings, tingling, making him dizzy.

“It is—fine,” he stammers, quite nonsensical, beginning to pace. “Do be careful with that. It may still bleed—and will need cleaning.”

Smiling, ungainly, Richie gathers himself from the floor. Once again, Eddie is jolted, slightly, by his height. 

“I will do my best,” Richie promises, sounding as fond as he is insincere. “Yet I am hardly certain how much carefulness I can allow—in my life of an indecent vagabond, you see. I have a reputation to uphold, you see—cannot go around being proper.”

“You won’t let it go, will you,” Eddie bristles, half-annoyed. He starts down the corridor in a haste, and hears Richie follow, in his long languid strides. “Truth be told—when you mentioned indecency—hurting yourself while acting like a boy stealing oranges from an orchard wasn’t what I had in mind.”

“No?” There’s amusement, still, in Richie’s voice, but Eddie keeps his gaze cinched to the ornate frescoes surrounding them. “What had you imagined, pray tell?”

Again, he feels himself colour. “I ah—well. Gambling, perhaps—women. You talked about nightlife—so I assumed,” he stammers, abashed. “Ah, forgive me, I should not have—”

“Assumed?” There’s a strange pause in the air between them, the silence acquiring certain thickness. Richie’s voice seems changed as well, as if hollowed. Eddie feels like he has ruined something—inevitably, made some grave and heinous mistake, but cannot see where.

After a while, Richie says, stilted, “Maybe you should have.”

“I—”

“Maybe it’s just the assumption that is misdirected.”

Eddie starts, looking up. Richie’s face has frozen in strange tension, and his voice has grown halting. Feeling himself at a loss—and yet, underneath it, horribly uneasy—Eddie frowns.

“How do you mean?” 

“I mean—oh, _damn_ you,” Richie looks away, suddenly angry. “You know. You _must_ know, you must’ve—guessed it already, with what I’ve told you about—about my father—”

He jerks into sudden movement, throwing himself to the window, leaning against it and exhaling audibly. He seems terribly agitated.

“Your father?” Eddie repeats, perplexed. “I don’t—understand.”

“You don’t?” Richie’s voice is quiet, barely above a whisper. “Then perhaps you should avoid me after all, Eddie—avoid me like the plague.”

Eddie is breathing heavily, his heartbeat wild and errant, though he still can’t—he cannot understand why. He blinks, as if to chase away the sudden delirium, “Like—what? Why?”

Richie turns, then, outlined by the muted light pooling through the half-penetrable glass. Standing like that, deathly pale, he seems to Eddie like an apparition—something unreal, elusive—an angel, yes, _angel of death_. His eyes are striking, keen on Eddie’s face.

“Because—it wasn’t _women_ ,” he says, at last, “that I was involved with.”

“I don’t—”

And then, suddenly, he does. He understands, with stark and terrible clarity, everything—not just Richie’s word, not even their implication, his own intuitive responses to every sound and gesture between exchanged between them, his own unrealised tendency towards a finally visible aim. 

He feels the blood drain from his face, so rapidly his vision almost fails him—suddenly overwhelmed; and feeling as if he were caught in delirium, takes a step back.

Something in Richie’s face shifts, instantly, into desperation, “Eddie—” 

He feels trapped, confronted with something too vast, too complex to comprehend. It is too much— _too much._

“Forgive me, I—” he breathes out, roughly. “I need to go.”

_ [Hotel Danieli, Riva degli Schiavoni] _

He makes his way back to the hotel blindly, as in a fever. He has fled from the palazzo, and went on to cross the labyrinthine weave of narrow passages and bridges, feeling himself hunted by the incessant foreign voices surrounding him, the briny exhalations of the canals, the looming confines of the alleys trapping the humid air and sunlight between them. 

He thinks little of the reason for his trepidation itself; focusing rather on the inane detail surrounding him. Without further misadventure, he soon finds himself in the dusky _portego_ of Danieli, shielded from the oppressive sunlight by the Red Verona marble and the dense fumes of tobacco from a farrago of different countries. Women in lace and men in linen crowd the room, chattering. 

He recognises some of the people—Miss Blum in her blue satin, leaving in haste and with an absent look; Countess Rogan on the sofa in the corner, listening in rapt focus to a broad bearded man sat in front of her. Denbrough passes him at some point, the same manic glint in his eyes as in the _farmacia_ —Eddie barely finds it in himself to reciprocate his greeting. 

He picks up wisps of conversation, disjointed, and only half-recognisable in his language. There’s talk of a ball in the evening, Venetian masks and a feast; of musicians and a comedic performance brought from Naples. People are moving, swarming, as a buzzing hive of insects. The air is so stuffy with perfume he feels breathless.

Suddenly lightheaded, he intercepts a glass of bourbon from the passing server, despite the ringing admonition ingrained in his clouded mind, that _he ought not drink, not with his weak constitution_ — _he’ll surely get sick. Sick!_ Steering himself back towards the foyer, he downs his glass, feeling the amber liquid burn at his throat _._

Steering himself back towards the foyer, he downs his glass, feeling the amber liquid burn at his throat like fire. He knows the voice but suddenly can’t resolve whether it belongs to mother to Myra, and cannot for his life remember why it matters to know the difference. His head feels as if it were to burst—he can’t think straight. _Mother—I am already sick._

Feverish, wracked with shivers, he flounders to his family’s quarters. He finds them blessedly deserted—though lacking sensibility to recognise it earlier, he now realises he couldn’t possibly stand to look at either Myra or his mother; that the very thought of it makes him nauseous. 

Locking the doors behind him, he throws himself into the ensuite, hurrying to splash his face with cold water from the basin. In the mirror, it is a stranger wearing his face—frenzied and dishevelled; he seems a man of such wild and volatile emotion as he has scarcely ever known himself to be.

Divesting himself impetuously of his overgarments, he hikes up the shirtsleeves and starts washing, viciously, scrubbing at the skin of his forearms as if to peel away the skin. He feels his eyes prickling, shamefully, despite his desperate effort to hold himself so rigidly still, _unchanged_. Feeling his clothes permeated with the tang of tobacco, he gropes for his cologne, dabbing it furiously on the skin. _I am already changed._

His hands are shaking too much—the bottle slips from his grasp and shatters against the rim of the basin.

“Ah—” Eddie gasps, clutching at his wrist. He’s cut himself on the shards, a tiny fissure along the length of his index finger marked a prick of ruby. Wanting to reach for his handkerchief instinctively, he remembers he’s gotten rid of it. His heart stutters at the memory.

_We match, now, a wretched bond,_ he thinks deliriously. _Are you glad?_

Overwhelmed, and feeling himself entirely unfair, he props his elbows on the vanity, collapses his head into his hands, and lets out a sob.

_I don’t know. I don’t know how to do this. I don’t—_

Bracing himself, he straightens, forcing himself mechanically to go through the motions of cleaning the scab, before going out into his quarters to change. He leaves the shattered bottle in the basin— _mother will think the room has been broken into._

_Let her think it,_ Eddie thinks, viciously, buttoning his shirt. _Let her think I was robbed and killed as well, let her think I am dead!_

A sudden rattle of the doorknob startles him—outside, he hears overlapping strident voices, as in a duet of Erinyes: mother and Myra’s, instructing the butler to fetch the spare keys, lamenting that he, Eddie, has surely collapsed inside, so weak, so sickly, lying lifeless in dire need of care and attention.

Seized with a sudden mind-clearing terror, he throws himself to the window. Unlatching it instead of the balcony door, he climbs outside, heart hammering, and lowers himself cautiously onto the balustrade. The briny wind, warm despite looming nightfall, hits his face as he stills, arms spread, balancing on the narrow ledge. 

He inhales.

It’s a strange thought, undoubtedly—wrecked as he is, Eddie feels, suddenly, like he is taking his first conscious breath of his life.

_ [Hotel Danieli, Riva degli Schiavoni] _

He doesn’t remember how he’s gotten back. The afternoon passed him in a haze of shame and hollow apathy, numbing him to the touches of the outer world. Light decaying slowly in phases, the day soon dies away into a thickening lowlight, diffused only artificially by the human-made labile lights of lamps and windows. 

A crowd is flocking through the foyer; streaming mid-chatter into the passing lounge, where the musicians are harmonising idly before the concert. In the corner of his eyes, he registers Beverly in her dress gown, standing arm-in-arm with Hanscom, her face alight with merriment. Something in the scene pulls at his heart, painfully, inside his chest—as if to puncture a sharper hollow where he already feels drained of vital force. 

He dismisses it, sharply, telling himself to rejoice her fragile happiness, and withdraws sharply back into the foyer, moving against the current. The last thing he needs—the last thing he can stomach is running into the Kaspbraks, ready for the evening. 

Head clouded now with a dull and throbbing ache, thoughts disarrayed, he goes up to his quarters. It’s quiet, there—no sound to disrupt the silence except his own footsteps and the mild rustle of the curtain in the balcony window. He goes into the ensuite—shaking off the frock on the way, he then undoes the vest, cufflinks, reaches to untie his cravat. 

The face that looks back at him from the mirror belongs to a weary, weathered man—his eyes are shadowed, face gristly from lack of a timely shave, hair an unruly mess. Tugging impatiently at the white silk cloth, he tosses it aside along with his spectacles, then leans down to wash his face. The headache is increasing; he feels ill. 

“You _fool_ ,” he murmurs, vaguely.

He’s gone too far—he’s _let_ himself go too far. There on the floor of the old building, when Eddie has knelt by his side as in a vision and took his hand in his, he lost his senses. Deceived by the light igniting Eddie’s hair in a halo around his face—suddenly almost darling—he felt himself haunted, genuinely, by a strange and straying angel. He has spoken—and has said too much.

_Gone, now_ , Richie thinks, dazed with an inarticulate grief. 

When he straightens again to look into the mirror, his features are blurred and imprecise, distorted like a mask for a masquerade. Sliding the spectacles cautiously back onto his nose, he drags himself back into the room. Approaching the mahogany vanity, he fixes himself a whisky, and downs it in one go. He perceives a stinging in his eyes and throat, a dilatant despondency he knows not whether to blame on alcohol or awareness of himself alone. 

Gripping tightly at the glass, stilled in his spot, he wishes, with violent intention, that he were unconscious; that he weren’t alive at all.

Shutting his eyes, he inhales through his nose, regaining composure as best he can—with full intention of getting into the stash of opium in his night stand, and then, eventually yielding to the dulling mercy of deep sleep; sparing him from misery till morning.

A harsh and sudden noise from the balcony startles him. 

He freezes in rapid realisation he has left the balcony door closed when leaving—the memory belied by the satin curtains billowing idly inside with each gust of wind. 

Taken so unawares, he feels starkly defenceless. In sudden sobriety, he wrenches his pistol out of the vanity drawer and aims it, with his failing hand, at the doorway. Heart frantic, he advances towards it, feeling as though he is walking towards own death.

In a sharp movement, gun pointed, he yanks the curtain aside.

“You’re going to kill me—for trespassing?” there’s a voice, hoarse, as though tragically amused. “The irony—the _irony_ of this!”

Breathing heavily, stunned, Richie lowers his pistol. 

Leaning against the balustrade, smoking a cigarette in a haphazardly assembled evening suit, there is Eddie. An odd expression graces his face—tense, solemn, contrasted harshly his fevered eyes fixed upon Richie. 

Astounded, disarmed still, Richie tosses the pistol back into the room. Steps up, then halts, thinking better of it. Holds himself still, finally, hands opening and closing helplessly in the air.

“How have you—” he says, and hears his voice scarcely above a whisper. “What are you—doing here?”

Eyes still cinched to his face in something akin to fury, Eddie ignores him. He snuffs his cigarette on the balustrade, and tosses it into the night.

“Who the _hell_ do you think you are,” he demands, voice low, taut from tension.

Richie flinches, as if struck. Backing away into the doorway, he looks down to the polished marble floor, seeking any reprieve—trying, fruitlessly, to make himself scarce. 

“Listen,” he says, quietly. “I wasn’t planning—I never meant you any harm. Believe me, I beg of you, I never wished to—”

“Damn you, I _know!_ ” Eddie explodes, causing him to flinch again. “I know—I—”

He trails off suddenly, voice breaking. His breath is haggard, audible in the evening hush. There’s nothing but a faint echo of the music from downstairs in the air, carried by the evening wind, imprecise as the humming of the sea.

Slowly, Richie looks up, his own eyes blurry.

Eddie’s look on him is almost unendurable.

“Who are you?” he repeats but softer. Richie watches him move then, draw closer, backing him into the room; feels the scent of his cologne choking in the air between them. 

“How did you know me?” Rushed, now, fervent like a prayer. “I didn’t even know myself, I didn’t even know, I never—I wouldn’t— _ah—_ ”

There is a choking sound, and Eddie falters, reaching out blindly, and almost collapsing—alarmed, Richie takes him by the arm, steadying. 

“ _I can’t breathe,_ ” Eddie whispers, tugging at his cravat with his free hand, desperate like his life depends on it, again as deathly pale as he’d been at Ca Dario, “I can’t breathe—I can’t—get this blasted _thing_ off me, god damn it, _ah—”_

“Wait, wait, let me, stop— _moving_ ,” Richie stammers, unthinkingly, drawing Eddie to the bed and sitting him down; he goes pliant. As soon as Richie’s quivering clumsy hands find their way to his throat, Eddie stills, completely. His breath hitches.

Cautiously, Richie loosens the silky knot, clumsy fingers brushing past Eddie’s throat on sheer accident. His skin is burning hot in touch, pulse scattershot. Discarding the garment, Richie lets himself linger there for only a second—that scarce strait of unscathed skin, right where Eddie feels so tangibly alive under his fingers. 

In a frightening, exhilarating moment he fears—wishes, desperately, to lean in, and kiss him, right there. _Right—_

Eddie inhales, raggedly. Richie’s hands fall away as if burned.

“There,” he repeats, stepping back. He feels himself as if he were to collapse; finds his own voice strangled.

Eddie nods, one hand flying blindly to his throat. His eyes are wide upon Richie’s face.

“I think—I’m unwell,” he says, as if through numb lips.

“Hectic fever?” Richie counters, attempting a wan smile. “You do—you do feel warm.”

Suddenly helpless, Eddie blurts out, “Who’s to blame.”

Richie can hear his own blood loud in his ears. He looks down onto his own hands again, abashed. 

“I told you—” he croaks, “I am trouble.”

“I gathered,” Eddie replies, still in that breaking, subdued voice. And then, stunningly, nearly stopping Richie’s heart. “You keep assuming I am _not_.”

“You mean—” Richie begins, dizzied with nerves, and cannot finish.

There’s a moment of silence between them, like a space, a threshold. Then he hears Eddie get up, slowly, cross it without words. He doesn’t dare move, stunned; not until he feels a warm, tentative hand come to rest upon his sternum.

“I haven’t thought—of anything but you, since …” Eddie says, halting, and half-buried in the quiet. Then he looks up, and laughs—nervous, thin, eyes wide and half-frightened. “I think I’m losing my mind.”

Richie kisses him.

* * *

**31st July 1894**

_ [Hotel Danieli, Riva degli Schiavoni] _

He wakes instantly, frightfully conscious. A warm weight is half-flung across his body, breathing evenly in a farrago of white linen. The balcony window is open, wind billowing in, carrying the faltering sound of the water. 

Blinking slowly, Eddie turns his head to the window. The light which filters through the lace and satin is wan and gauzy, shy yet in the early morning. There’s a singing, distant, somewhere down by the canals. Half-consciously, he tries to shape out the words of the melody, but the language eludes him, sounds collapsing one into another in one seemingly unending sentence. 

His arm is thrown across the pillow—unthinkingly, he cards his fingers through Richie’s hair, eyes still fixed on the window. He does not have to look to know— _know_ , with an exact, well-earned certainty—what he would see, if he turned. 

A sharp-cut jawline, poorly-shaved and rough to the touch, the unruly dark hair pillowed around his face, the lanky long legs and broad shoulders. Large delicate hands, long-fingered; hands of an uncertain pianist. A brash trilling voice, and brash remarks of a comedian. At last, a crooked smile, almost too wide for the face holding it, almost too bright to look at; the loud, contagious laugh, the warmth of it. 

Blue eyes, closed now in sleep. The hesitance in them as he’s whispered, _“Eddie—”_

Stifling the thought abruptly, Eddie stills the movement of his hand.

He is suffused with a sudden and ubiquitous cold. Feeling himself steered into movement like a clockwork mechanism, he sits up and starts dressing, efficiently and with fastidious care: buttoning shirt and cufflinks, vest, trousers, tying his shoes. He keeps his mind trained, in immutable rigour, on the small litany of tasks at hand, disallowing any distraction. 

He feels—even _now_ —the beginnings of a tremor grasping his body; knows his time to be limited before the dulled nerves fail him. 

Guided still as if by the fine strings of a puppeteer, he finds an ink pot and paper, and scribbles out a laconic message, letting himself contain in it only the scarcest of directions, lest he dwells on anything too long. 

Quivering, now, he places the note on the nightstand. Still looking away, resolute, he makes his silent way out of the quarters, breath held until he steps outside. 

_ [Hotel Danieli, Riva degli Schiavoni] _

He wakes to a sudden noise. 

For a moment, he lies unmoving, eyes blurry, body heavy with sleep and confusion. There’s a chill in the air, a misplaced stray wind slithering past the sheets. Still in a haze, he blinks to chase away the fuzzy strands of a dream still clouding his mind. After a while, he lifts himself onto his elbow, and reaches to the night-stand, searching for his glasses. 

The room clears, sunk in unexpected light flooding inside. The wind has flung the balcony door wide open, the gauzy curtain billowing inside like a ship’s sail, carrying in the indistinct disharmony of voices and noises of life on the street below. 

For a moment, he still doesn’t understand _—_ the frail feeling crouched in his chest, a skittish hope, pressing down lightly on the lungs and heart in quivering anticipation. He turns onto his back, raised on the elbows, and takes in the room: captured as by a painter, dreamlike itself in the eerie brightness. 

He feels compelled to expect something strange to happen in this light, break the cottony hush of silence, and fill the hollow waiting with someone’s blissful presence. 

Yet nothing happens. Sobriety comes slowly, trickling into the mind and body along with the cold wind still intruding inside. He sees his clothes scattered haphazard across the floor, next to the cold glint of metal. He keeps his eyes trained upon it for a length of time _—_ perceiving the sensation in his ribcage fade and coagulate to a rigid cluster, a phantom weight upon the chest. His hands feel cold, bloodless, and a wave of tepid nausea overcomes him. 

_Eddie—Eddie is gone._

Richie shudders, as if struck. 

The light dims, with the suddenness of a storm coming over water. Everything is cast in a haze of opaque grey. The wind picks up, once more, and knocks the balcony door against the wall. 

Still, through lowered lids, at the abandoned revolver, Richie does not move.

_ [Piazza di San Marco] _

The city is vague, swathed in gauzy mist.

He walks fast through the back alleyway, the damp cold air shocking his skin after the lulling warmth of the night he’s come stumbling out from. He finds himself registering a myriad small details about the scenery surrounding him; the catch of light on the gold-ornate roofline of the Basilica; the flutter of birds circling the promontory on wide-spread wings, the _crescendo_ shutter windows opening; tilting patterns of cracked stone in the pavement under his feet. He wishes for a cigarette—for the rush of nicotine to order his errant thoughts, and the methodical ritual to soothe his wandering hands. His body is trembling with an unknown energy he suddenly finds no way of constraining. 

Inhaling sharply, Eddie draws to a halt, perceiving the scene in front of him.

It would be lunacy to expect much company at the Piazzetta this early at dawn, and he is surprised to find it as improbable as his own presence: crouched on the stone in a pool of pale blue satin, haloed by swarming birds, he sees his neighbour at Danieli, the reticent Miss Blum—one small gloved hand outstretched and filled with grain, face alight with happiness. 

She isn’t on her own. 

Her smiling eyes are fixed upon a companion—curly-haired and shabby, if delicate in both dress and manner. In a startled blink, Eddie recognises Uris, the troubled clockmaker he glimpsed at the apothecary the day prior. The young man’s face is downturned, timidly, flushed slightly from cold or excitation, and he is talking animatedly in a hushed voice. 

As he talks, he holds Patricia’s offered palm in both his hands, gently, as if he were holding a trinket made of coloured glass.

He sees Eddie first, whilst glancing up at the Basilica, and blanches. Alarmed, the lady follows his eyes.

‘Mr Kaspbrak,’ she says rapidly, colouring in turn. She rises swiftly, managing to somehow not disturb the birds around her. Her quietened companion follows suit, expression tense and expectant. ‘I wasn’t expecting—to see you here.’

‘Yes, quite,’ Eddie manages, at length, hardly knowing what he is saying. ‘I wasn’t, ah—expecting to be here. Must be the moon. Have you—seen the moon, at night?’

‘Quite bright, was it?’ Patty says, breathlessly, eyes still searching Richie’s face as if desperately. She hasn’t let go of Uris’s hand, instead clutching at the thready cufflink of his coat as if to seek support.

‘Blinding,’ Eddie replies, curtly. ‘Have a good day, Miss Blum. Mr Uris.’

He bows slightly, miming the tipping of his hat, and scurries away towards the docks.

_ [Hotel Danieli, Riva degli Schiavoni] _

He walks downstairs as in a haze, not remembering the motions. He must have dressed, and washed himself, without really knowing it. He is detached from his surroundings, entirely. Like an actor exhausted with a play’s weary run, he walks onstage finding it suddenly, unbearably fictitious; walks to bow before his audience one last time, before the curtain falls.

Around him, people speak, in voices obscure and murmuring; they move against each other led by overlapping strings of intention. Only he goes drifting aimlessly, acutely alone, one jarring note drawn mistakenly by someone’s failing hand upon the flawless note sheet.

Realising he left without knowing his destination, he now perceives the destination to be a fallacy. He _has_ nowhere to go, nowhere left to be that would matter _—_ casting his eyes unseeingly across the room, he feels it again: a harrowing awareness, gained after the last day of sweet belief, of being stranded, fatally, in a wrong life. 

The fallacy’s order is ruptured now, left unspooled from the mottled skein of his own decisions. The only way to go is further, he knows, clinging onto new infirm delusions and praying for oblivion. _But damn you,_ Richie thinks, despair pressing down at his throat. _I won’t leave without a word—I don’t want to leave a coward._

With a sudden resolve of coming clean, even by writing, he turns towards the foyer, aiming for the doors outside. His progress is impeded by a near collision with the Countess and Hanscom, standing together in the archway to the conservatory. 

“I—Apologies,” Richie mumbles, hastily, trying to steer himself back into the corridor—fruitlessly. Beverly’s hands catch at the lapels of his frock, tugging him back.

“Rich,” she calls out, urgently, crowding in on him in worry, and searching his face. “Rich—dearest—what is it? I can see you’re not yourself, has something happened?”

Damn _her,_ he thinks now, for knowing him too well—damn them both for sharing in each other’s misery like siblings joined with something else than blood: he _recognises_ the solicitous look of her weary eyes, just as she is certain to recognise the hurt in his. 

Overwhelmed with a sense of sudden and debilitating futility, Richie gives in, sagging against the wall.

“I’m a fool,” he whispers, tenaciously, fixing his downcast eyes on the painted satin of Bev’s gown. “A _fool_ —and a bastard. I have … I have done something terrible.”

Eyebrows drawn together, Beverly shakes her head in gentle admonition. “Rich, I don’t believe it.”

Tugging off one lacy glove and rising on her tiptoes, she raises her hand and presses the palm of it to Richie’s forehead.

“You feel warm,” she mutters, concerned, oblivious. “What happened?”

The words, distorted strangely by memory, echo insidiously within his mind as in mockery of his own. On instinct, he backs away, unheeding of Beverly’s growing concern.

“I—” he tries, futile. “You’ll excuse me, I must go, I am _—I am unwell_.”

He tears himself through the crowd and rushes for one of the backyard alcoves—identical almost to the one where he’s met Eddie—and is suddenly sick.

_ [Chiesa di San Giorgio Maggiore] _

His frenzied eyes fall first upon an old gondolier, unfastening the rope of his boat. Nearly stumbling in his hurry, Eddie makes his way towards him, reaching out as if to wave.

“Can you—would you be able to take me,” he whispers, too quiet, too incoherent. “Would you be able to get me across—the water?”

The swarthy old man fixes him with a pensive stare of eyes squinted in sunlight. “ _Si, signore,_ ” he says, voice mellifluous with the native accent. “Where to?”

_Anywhere,_ he thinks, _away. Away._

“I don’t—” he begins, then cuts himself off, eyes happening upon the whitish outline across the quivering water. “That church,” he says weakly, pointing. “There, across the water. Could you—could you take me there?”

“ _San Giorgio?_ ” the gondolier says mildly, looking to the white basilica. “There, I will take you free of charge.”

“Thank you,” Eddie says, clutching to the side of the boat as the gondolier steers them into the water, the ferro cutting through the tides. 

And then again, too quiet to be heard, staring at his knees. “Thank you.”

He steps onto the sun-warm checker-board marble on weak legs. Half-outlined by the brilliant white of San Giorgio’s façade, half by the sizzle of water, his gondolier companion seems as illusory —as strangely allegorical—as Charon himself, as a fresco, when he raises one hand in valediction and steers the boat away. 

He is alone. The wind pulls at his clothes, as though pulling him invitingly towards the water, but Eddie holds still. 

He thinks of turning, and going inside—he’s been there, recently, with mother and Myra. He remembers their voices drifting out, eerie and distorted, from the other side of the presbytery as they explored—together but separate—the cold dim of the nave. He remembers that he’d his eyes, then, and stared for a long while at the haunted Tintoretto in the presbytery, and tried to understand the looming sensation of vast and consuming despair that overcame him, the burning awareness of own unforgivable irrelevance. 

A sudden voice cuts through the memory, loud as church bells, and sharp with emotion, _“No, I shall not pretend. I’ve always thought that dishonest.”_

The tightness in his chest grows almost unbearable.

Yielding finally to his long suppressed self-awareness, Eddie lowers himself to his knees on the marble steps half-sunk in water; inhales sharply, spasmodically. 

“ _God_ ,” he whispers, raggedly, hunching in on himself and burying his face in his hands. “God, _fuck_.”

It is too much—all of it, the sudden and terrifying awareness. He feels conscious, painstakingly, of his every breath and heartbeat, the drag of cotton and linen over skin, the stinging graze and taste of salt in wind, the warm caress of sunlight. He feels phantom traces of each of Richie’s touches, lingering, burned as if in some strange writing vision into his singing skin.

His whole life seems to him now a cruel and horrid joke. All of it—the years of silence, years of sickness of spirit and weakness of body, flung upon him by his mother—belied now so bluntly by the violent agency coursing through his blood. _I am young_ — _alive_. 

He sees it as vivid as if presented to him in a vision; his faithless vows to Myra, his endless miasma and stagnancy, a resignation to a life of silent and torturous dying, each second survived without breathing.

_I am young; I ought not be so lonely._

He breathes in now, quivering, and lowers his hands: spreads them out over the water, and looks at them.

Feeling! Cursed and sudden; he wishes to cry—then perceives he is crying, scalding tears streaming down his face, burning on his skin. It is terrible, dreadful—wondrous. He laughs, loud, giddy, the sound of it as if involuntary, or wrenched out in pain. He has never felt like this, _never_ , before. He never wants to stop feeling it again.

_I have never—_

He straightens, still kneeling, and turns his wet face up to the sunlight. Tides of teal sea water come up, lapping at the stairs and staining his dress trousers. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t care; not a damn. He feels stunned, recklessly happy. He sees that he can’t go back to his life in New York, not as the same man, not without feeling like he is burying himself alive. 

“This is it,” he says, to himself, breathing evenly. “This is it. No matter what—no matter what.”

_ I shall not go back. _

In everything, he sees signs—finding Richie first and foremost, but not only—in the broken vials, Stanley’s admonition, the Countess dancing with Hanscom, Patricia’s look of understanding (communication?)—signs of a different direction, a different life to pursue.

“ _Va tutto bene, signore?_ ”

As if woken up, Eddie turns his head—an old Venetian woman, face wrinkled from age and sunlight, is watching him in concern from the church entrance.

“Yes—yes, I’m fine,” Eddie says, quietly. He smiles, so wide it almost _hurts_ , and draws himself to his feet. His eyes are still blurry with tears. “I’ve had a revelation.”

The woman nods, taking the words as if they were commonplace. 

“The city—it will do that, show the way,” she tells him, in broken English, gesturing with her hand to the sky, or the canal; it is hard to tell. “ _Stai attento,_ be wise with it.”

_My whole life has led me here—to you._

_ [Piazza San Marco] _

Later, an indefinite measure of time later, he finds himself seated at a table outside Gran Caffè Quadri, shielded from the Piazzetta behind a pillar. The square is deserted: the overcast sky, heavy with grey-knitted clouds, invites to seek shelter inside. The wind, stronger and briny from tiny flecks of water it carries, cards through his hair and pulls at the white serviette. 

He sits with his chin propped on his left hand and half-closed eyes fixed unseeingly on thegrim facade of Procuratie Nuove. His right hand, wielding a fountain pen, is trembling lightly, poised mid-air over a blank sheet of letter paper.

He feels nauseous still, limbs leaden and weakened as after a fever. He supposes it mightbe because he’s scarcely allowed any sustenance into his system aside from a pot of bitter coffee that, instead of clearing his mind, seemed to commit him further to steadfast fragmentation. 

Bowing his forehead to his hand, he makes a vain attempt at gathering his thoughts again. He knows the fierce emotion he wants conveyed—knows the reality of what he _needs_ to say, also. Yet he can hardly fathom a way of putting it in words that wouldn’t contradict one aspect or the other; save perhaps for bluntness of _“Forgive me”_ —an appeal he knows he has no right to demand.

And yet, still, he feels it—a desperate want of one last chance; one last meeting or exchange. Closure or opening. Anything: forgiveness, even, if he’s not allowed anything more human. He closes his eyes, and sees Eddie’s face alight with laughter, feels the touch of his hands mapping out his skin. He wants to forget, and hates himself for it. 

Eyes shut, he writes the unspeakable prayer

_I thought you were what I came to find. I thoght I saw a way in you I’ve never had before me. I looked at you, and I knew you—and you knew me as well. You knew me. When you leave, I want you to come back.I want you to happen to again, a million times, till death. I want—you. I want you here._

Cursing, he slams the pen down onto the table, bending the nib irreparably. No, this will _not_ do.

Sluggishly, he rises to his feet and walks into the shadow of the _loggia_ , hands fumbling listlessly in his frock coat for the cigarette case. The light is darkening, rapidly, into a dense humid gloom heralding an imminent downpour. He passes two waiters in black and white frocks, pointing to the sky and talking of _la grande alluvione._

_Flood?_ With a twist of heart, he bows his head to light the cigarette, thinking it cruelly fitting.

A violent tug at his elbow startles him; prepared to defend himself from a conman or intrusive neighbour from the hotel, he looks up mid-lighting a cigarette—and stills, nearly struck with a heart attack.

“For God’s _sake_ ,” a frantic, impossible voice says. “Where have you _been?_ It’s been hours!”

It’s him, thought it _can’t_ be. But it’s him, unmistakably; from the dark hair, skin dusted with freckles from the sun; to his pristine suit, the intense dark eyes and furrowed eyebrows. It’s _him_ , like invoked, a tangible miracle.

“ _Eddie_ ,” Richie whispers, lowering the cigarette. Blood pulses in his ears, loud and deafening. He feels weak. “I—”

“Yes?” Eddie demands, sounding strangely angry. “Have you not gotten my message? I’ve been worried sick!”

Stunned, feeling faint still, Richie blinks. 

“Your—message?” he repeats at length, in a small voice.

“The note I’ve left you!”

“You’ve left me a _note?_ ”

Letting go of his elbow at last, Eddie pinches the bridge of his nose in frustration. 

“God _damn_ it,” he mutters, stifled, breathing heavily. “I thought—”

He cuts himself off. The pause is long enough for a fraction of his senses to return to Richie; grasped with a sudden desperation to try and salvage whatever is possible, at however harrowing cost.

“ _Forgive me_ ,” he blurts out, unthinking. Eddie stiffens.

Behind them, beyond the pillars of the arcade, rain starts falling.

“What?” Eddie says, quietly.

“Forgive me,” Richie repeats, quietly. “Everything. You needn’t fear me—I _will_ leave. No one will know, no one will find out. Just, please, don’t h—”

“What?” Eddie repeats, loud now, blanching. And then, sharply, “No— _no._ ”

Richie startles, taken aback. Eddie’s strange reaction wrings him out at last, from his haze of grief-stricken apology. It is not what he expected at all. Thrown off balance, he looks up.

Eddie’s face is deathly pale again, just as it had been at the palazzo, at the balcony—only a day prior. He is looking at Richie as though he’s seen a morbid apparition.

“No,” he repeats, harshly. “You cannot—you cannot _possibly_ leave now.”

Richie swallows, trying to school his errant heart into obedience. He braces himself.

“I must. It’s—it’s the decent thing to do. You know?” he stammers, barely holding himself together. “Like you said, there would be—there would be _meaning_ to my actions—

“No!” Eddie exclaims again, moving closer. Richie tenses, as half-expecting a strike. “You—you cannot leave at all! I forbid you.

“ _Eddie_ ,” Richie manages, hardly even a sound. “Please—”

“Do you hear me? I forbid you! After everything—”

A sudden conviction, fierce and heartfelt, lends him strength. 

“After everything,” he says, urgently, placing a trembling tentative hand on Eddie’s breast. “I must leave. For your sake. We can—if you still want, if you don’t despise me, we could—keep contact—we could write each other letters—”

Eddie jerks away from him, brusquely. “To hell with your letters!”

Richie swallows, clenching his jaw. “Your fiancée—”

“Ah, to hell with _her_ , too,” Eddie says, hysterically. He turns away from Richie, pressing the back of his hand to his mouth. He looks stricken.

“Eddie,” Richie says, soft, against his tortured heart. “You don’t mean it.”

There’s a moment of dead silence between them.

“Don’t you dare!” Eddie then shouts, harshly, turning to Richie again. His eyes are wet, gaze burning. “Don’t you _dare_ tell me what I mean or not, what I am—you cannot _know_ , you—”

He breaks off, as if unable to go on, and merely shakes his head. 

Unable to respond, and unable to look away though the look on Eddie’s face is unendurable, Richie feels his own heart shattering in sudden realisation.

_You too?_ He thinks, fatuous. _All this time—you too? And it is lost anyway—_

Then Eddie blinks, rapidly, and straightens. He gestures with his hand, a sharp nervous movement in the air between them.

“I have to go now,” he says, voice hoarse. He still seems agitated, tense; but his face is newly unreadable. Guarded. “I have to go. But I must—I must talk to you. You mustn’t leave until then. _Please_. Promise me you—”

“I won’t,” Richie says faintly, his voice almost buried in the expanding noise of falling rain.

It occurs to him, then, that this isn’t the end—isn’t the last he’s seen of Eddie, contrary to what he’s tried so ardently to prepare himself for. Stirred by this wan and flimsy hope, his reckless heart abandon to it, stupid; striving towards Eddie.

If it is cowardly to cling to it, if it is indecent; then so be it. He will 

“Good,” Eddie says, curt. Then, exploding, “Oh, if only you read my note! This would be settled by now.”

“Settled—what?” Richie asks, hoarsely.

“I’ll tell you—when we talk.” He avoids his gaze, resolute. 

“When?”

“Tomorrow,” Eddie says. “Meet me—meet me at Contarini, the house with the spiral staircase—you know which? Tomorrow, first thing in the morning. Then we’ll—talk more.”

_ [Lido] _

He dreams the old dream again; hazy and elusive, well-treaded. He is running along the coast of Lido, chasing a boy; his trousers hitched up over bare calves, laughing as a wave crashes into them and sends them tumbling to the sand.

For a moment he can see Eddie’s flushed grinning face as he ends up trapped underneath him—then another wave comes upon them, submerging them wholly. 

It’s only a moment—of a strange breathless suspension, water pressing at the skin and lungs, dizzy—before they surface; Eddie coughing and clutching at Richie’s soaked-through blazer.

“I’m dying,” he chokes out. His face is ashen. Richie scrambles to his knees and tugs them further inland, onto the sun-warm sand. “I’m—dying.”

“No, you’re not!” Richie yells at him. Eddie is so taken aback at the strange reaction he quietens instantly, frowning. Richie beams at him. “Look here!” he proclaims. “You’re better already—I saved you!”

Eddie pushes at him, shoving him into the sand. He calls out, “ _You_ pushed me in the water!”

“And then I fished you out!”

There’s a moment of companionable silence as both of them try to catch their breaths, lying sprawled on the scorching sand. Miserably, Eddie plucks at the hem of his wet clothes, face drawn. “ _Mama_ will kill me,” he mutters, fatuously. Then, even more sullen, “I don’t want to go home.”

Turning his head, Richie peers at him, eyes narrowed in the sunlight. Lying on the sand, wet curls plastered to his forehead and face contorted, Eddie seems like a compact little dash-fire. 

Philosophically, he says, “Then don’t. We can live _here_.”

Eddie looks up and studies him sceptically for a while. Then he smiles. 

His small hand, still wet from the sea, finds Richie’s and tugs at his fingers.

He mutters, “I suppose we can always go back.”

* * *

**1st August 1895**

_ [Giglio] _

At dawn, the rain eases

Through the mist, sheltered by the canopy at the end of Calle Gritti, Giglio’s narrow terminal for the _vaporetto_ steamer going in the direction the railway station, two figures can be seen, outlined in the violet haze of dawning light—a young man and woman.

He watches them, quiet.

The man is speaking, head bowed, in a quiet measured voice, “You ought to marry proper. Someone worthy of you—someone with a position, wealth, a reputation—someone to provide for you. Not a student without—without a name, without a _penny_ to his name.”

She speaks, then, voice steady, “But I want him.”

She reaches up, one hand coming to cup his face. He turns away, as if desperate to avoid her eyes.

“It is impossible—I couldn’t—” he says, in a breaking voice. “I wouldn’t forgive myself—”

“Look at me—Stanley, look at me,” she says, other hand coming to hold his face as well, turning it to herself. “Do you imagine I could be happy—any other way? Could either of us? Could _you?_ ”

He takes one of her hands in his and brings it to his lips, reverently.

“Patricia,” he says, hushed. “There would be no coming back from this.”

There’s a moment of silence. 

Then Patty says, quietly, “Good. I don’t want to go back.”

_ [Palazzo Contarini del Bovolo] _

As the ship moves, Eddie stands leaning against the railing in the bows, smoking. The timid morning light, only just rising into its blinding force, disperses the last traces of drizzle, slanting off the water in strange mirages.

Getting off at Rialto, he walks languidly along Rio di San Luca, his frock shucked off andthrown across one shoulder. The light thickens, bringing out the carmine of the brick in the tenements framing his path and belying the harsh-cold slither of the early wind, briny and biting lightly at the skin. In one of the adjacent alleyways, a gondolier is singing; with a soft tapping, a pair of green shutters is flung open and a young female voice joins in, mid-laughter.

_“In te ravviso il sogno ch'io vorrei sempre sognar!_

Taking in the music, Eddie rounds the corner, slowly approaching the curving staircase of the Contarini, fragile and dreamlike in the morning’s honeyed haze. Stopping for only a moment to throw his head back and stare at the tower circled by drowsy seagulls, he then climbs the stairs. 

He holds his breath, uncertain, until he reaches the top.

_He is there._

Richie is there—outlined by the morning, sitting on the floor by the cloisters surrounding the circular gallery, head turned towards the city, bent meekly to his knees in exhaustion. 

He startles at the sound of Eddie’s approach, rising to his feet instantaneously.

He looks a wreck—tall, trembling like a leaf, with his face pale and shadowed. It occurs to Eddie he must not have slept—his bright blue eyes are reddened, watery as he gazes at him. He’s never before seemed dearer to him.

“You came,” Richie says, hoarsely.

Eddie swallows. “Of course I did.”

Richie shakes his head, raising one tentative hand to adjust his spectacles. He averts his eyes from Eddie, as if not bearing to look at him directly. “I wasn’t—certain you would.”

Seized with a sudden rush of affection, Eddie wishes he could damn everything, take his face in hands and kiss him silent—yet he can’t. Not _yet_ ; perhaps not ever. He cannot think of it. He needs, now more than ever, to stay clear-minded and focused. 

So he draws a steadying breath, walking up to the ledge a small distance from Richie. Instead of facing him, he looks away, past the ruddy rooftops and stone, to the verdigris dome of the Basilica. His throat is tight, heart dizzy with nerves. He clenches his hands upon the railing.

“I wanted to tell you—” he says, voice weaker than it ought to be. “My engagement is broken.”

There’s a lingering moment of silence between them, almost timid. With a desperate resolution, Eddie doesn’t move his eyes away from the horizon. 

At length, “Is it certain?” Richie asks, sotto voce. Nothing can be read from his tone.

Eddie nods, still not looking at him. He focuses instead on his hands. “It is,” he says, curtly. 

Another lull; the air between suffused with the dazing wind. 

Then, quieter still, “Is it because of—”

“—you?” Eddie asks, blunt, his nerves betraying him. His voice is clear, resonant, and he looks up to the sky with a fierce conviction. “Yes. Yes, _goddamn_ it, it is.’

And at last, he yields, looking to his right. 

Richie’s face is stricken; crestfallen. His eyes are fixed upon Eddie as if in expectance of the fatal verdict, a conviction to his final sentence. 

_So that’s—how it is_ , Eddie thinks, and shivers.

“You needn’t do anything,” he manages, numb. 

“No,” Richie says at once, his voice breaking. He is holding on to the rail with the desperation of a drowning man. “I shall—go to her,” he utters at length, voice pleading. 

Eddie frowns. He feels, suddenly, exhausted. “Whatever for?”

“I shall go to her,” Richie repeats, nodding, with widened feverish eyes. “I shall—beg, if need be. To take you back. I will swear on God, that nothing’s—

The bitter, overwhelming disappointment takes better of his rigidly imposed composure—Eddie feels sick. Weary, he says, shutting his eyes, “You don’t _believe_ in God.”

“I’ll _make_ myself believe!” He breaks off, then goes on, haltingly. “Goddamn it, I won’t let this ruin you, not me, I won’t—let her forsake you over—”

Oh. _Oh._

The sudden understanding of crashes into him with a stunning violence, putting an end to either reason or coherence. Stunned, Eddie opens his eyes wide. His heart beats too fast, as if to wrest itself out of the ribcage, and he is dizzy with air. He’d hoped for a straightforward solution; now he knows he won’t get it without being straightforward himself.

“No, you don’t understand,’ Eddie says faintly, his voice shaky and high with hysteria.

“I do,” Richie counters. “I _do_ , and I will—”

“I broke it off.” 

Silence, stunning, brimming with the loud wind. 

He turns to Richie fully, slowly, eyes bright with mania. 

“Do you hear me?” he asks, almost calmly. “ _I_ did. I broke it off.”

Richie looks suddenly lost, his face guileless and frightened like a child’s. Helplessly, he repeats, “You—”

The wind tousles his hair, wild around his confused face. Eddie looks at him not knowing whether the depth of his feeling in the moment comes from vast joy or equal sadness. He smiles, wistful and dim, and bows his head in admission.

Inhaling, he says, “I’ve been—so _lonely_.”

He pictures himself again, walking through the pervading chill of the nave, feeling as if he belonged to that other side already, with the old dust and age-greyed paint on the walls, with the gnarled bone buried under his feet. 

“And then—you happened.” 

“You cannot mean—” Richie says at length, hoarsely. 

“I can,” Eddie counters, and laughs. A strange thing; he’s never used to do it—certainly never in a manner so effortless. “I _have_ to, there’s—no going back, now. Come what may, I am not to go back. It would be—God, it would be _suicide_.”

Richie’s blue eyes are bright with tears. Barely even vocal, he utters, “I am sorry.”

Eddie shuts his eyes. Measured, he exhales, “I am _not_.”

“It’s as I told you—that first day. My whole life, I spent as if—sleepwalking. And then you— _you!_ You found me, and brought me back from the dead—and how could you expect of me now, to ever go back?”

“Eddie,” Richie whispers, “you don’t know what you’re—”

“I was _dead_ ,” Eddie reiterates, interrupting him; unable to constrain himself any further, he draws away from the balcony and steps forward. Reaching over, he touches the side Richie’s face. “Do you understand me?”

Dazed, Richie bows his head. His face is wet—he’s been crying.

“I was, too,” he says, very quietly.

Lightly, tentatively, Eddie draws the thumb of his hand past Richie’s cheek, brushing away the moisture. 

“I’ll stay with you,” he says, impossibly brave. “If you’ll let me.” 

* * *

**21st March 1895**

_ [Ponte Santa Maria Nova, Cannaregio] _

He closes the Steinway’s fall board with an echoing rattle.

“Ah, good,” he says fondly, running a caressing hand over the polished hardwood of the case. “Looks like they didn’t batter my darling too much _en route_. Though I nearly threw hands with the bastard who tuned her, shrill little American, horrendously grating—telling _me_ how to—”

“You speak of it as if it were some—some poor woman that you’ve had smuggled overseas,” a voice speaks up, tired and lightly mocking.

Smiling warmly, Richie turns on his heel. “She _is_ ,” he says, innocuously. “The woman of my life.”

Eddie shakes his head in disapproval, yet it is obvious he is smiling, too. 

Eddie—sleep-mussed and weary from travel, stretched on the bed with a cigarette in hand; with his ruffled hair and an untucked half-buttoned shirt, looking out drowsily through hooded eyes out of the arched window, onto the square by Ponte Santa Maria Nova. 

All at once, Richie is overcome with affection so vast and unmeasured he feels himself barely apt to contain it. As if by instinct, he is drawn towards the bed, collapsing onto the sheets and burying his head in Eddie’s lap. His left hand comes to card through Richie’s wild hair as on instinct, and when he blinks up, Eddie is watching him with a small smile.

Tucked into the easternmost corner of Cannaregio, the quietest of Venice’s _sestieri_ , their quarters are modest but liveable. Cosy; with the newly shipped array of Richie’s French furniture, easily navigated with Eddie’s knack for organising spaces. Lived-in, if barely so, as proven by the subtle traces of their presence: clothes and belongings strewn across the lounge, red oranges piled up in the dining room, a potted orange tree gifted by the young Madame Hanscom, sat proudly in a patch of sunlight between green shutters.

In the end, however, Richie doesn’t care much for the specifics of his living arrangements, not as long as he shares them with Eddie.

Eddie, who’s only just returned, thin and weary, from his long-dreaded visit in New York; whom he’s found again in the gauzy fumesofthe morning’s first train from Lausanne. Whom he’s embraced, childishly close and tight, face buried in his shoulder, listening in dazed relief to the startled sound of his laugh. 

Who is _here_ , _now_. 

He reaches up clumsily, patting the side of Eddie’s face—freckling already from the sneaky Southern sun—and watching him pretend to wince, nose scrunched up charmingly. There are dark shadows under his eyes, and as Richie’s long fingers trace the side of his face, they settle into the pronounced hollow of his dimple.

“You look like you’re dying of consumption,” Richie mutters, hopelessly fond. “You must be so tired. Rest, I’ll keep watch over everything.”

For a moment, Eddie is quiet. Then he reaches up, deliberately—and takes Richie’s right hand in his, threading their fingers together. 

“No,” he then says, voice hushed. He looks down at Richie with his eyes earnest and intent. “I feel wide awake.”

He leans down and kisses him.

**_FIN_ **

**Author's Note:**

> _all of them stay in venice and gradually become friends, until they all come live together at a palazzo bought by the happily remarried madame hanscom._
> 
> i have so much more to say about this little universum that I would love to say but have no space for—about all the other losers, bill and mike's experiments, bev's career, and stanley and patty's life, about eddie and richie's life, the reasons i picked venice (aside from its inherently homoerotic aura, that is), about ... everything. 
> 
> so if you enjoyed this story, feel free to talk to me here or @lvsliescribbles on twitter / @lvslie on tumblr 
> 
> it really means the world. 🥰


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